Southeast Asian history features the stories of indigenous cultures that had arisen without much intermingling with outside influences. Those cultures will be drastically changed by the coming of the european traders in sixteenth century. This thesis will explore the influece that european and non-european imperial policies had on this region. Main focus will be on economic, social, religious and political changes that occured.
It’s worth noting that colonization took quite some time. In the first years of the scramble for colonial holdings, the interaction was benign and even beneficial on both sides. European visitors to Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century approached Asians as equals, displaying an openness and readiness to learn about their culture. However everything changed when scientific and industrial developments had produced a technological gulf between Europe and Southeast Asia which significantly change balance of power in the region. That gulf will eventually bring colonization. And colonization will bring new western ideas and concepts about state management, high education that included political theories and human rights studies, new economic opportunities and new types of religion.
Colonialism will cause harsh reactions from local population that will breed nationalism which will be cause for later reformation and decolonization. Leaders of that decolonization will be educated local elites that had access to advanced western education. Although those local elites will become revolutionaries that will bring age of colonization to its end they will not eliminate it completely. They will use bureaucratic systems that Europeans put in place so that they could rule their new states more efficiently. So in a way we can say that systems of colonization and imperialism stay in place even today.